Christmas in the States

I spent the past two weeks back in the States with friends and family. During my first week back, I did all my Christmas shopping, visited with my grandparents, cooked chocolate chip cookies and raisin cookies with Dave (yum!), caught up on a few films I’d been meaning to see for a while, and celebrated Christmas with the full family.

During the second week, I did a bit more traveling:

Last Sunday afternoon, I drove down to Baltimore to watch some football with a group of friends from CMU. For the Steelers v. Ravens game, we headed out to Mothers, a rather popular Ravens bar. Let’s just say that I’m pretty sure we’re the only people in there who weren’t wearing purple Ravens jerseys. When the Steelers pulled ahead in the last minutes of the game, we decided it was probably a good idea to leave before anyone decided to take out the loss on us. Great venue for a game, though!

This past Monday, I drove Dave out to Pittsburgh. He just finished his first semester at Carnegie Mellon as a grad student and, wow, it’s a different experience than when I was there! I’m sure part of it is the different schools, part is based on investments the university made into new buildings, and part is because he’s a grad student, where I’d been an undergrad. He is sharing an office built for three, with only one other grad student. It’s in a new building, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto campus. Not bad! After seeing that and going for an incredible bacon bleu burger at Tessaros, I got to see Dave’s apartment before heading off for the drive to the Poconos.

I met Katherine at her family’s “camp” in the Poconos… let’s just say that it was a fully functional house, as were all of the other “camps” around the lake. We got to catch up with friends, do some hiking through the woods onsite, and meet others from the other nearby camps for New Years Eve. Great times!!

I’m now back in London, getting ready for reality to hit with the return to work tomorrow morning...